Star Wars with occasional sarcasm

Disney’s Alan Horn: Second unit shooting for Episode VII is happening in Abu Dhabi, future films may return to May

At a press event this morning (at least Variety and Bloomberg were there) Disney’s Alan Horn dropped us a few bits of Episode VII news. He clarified his earlier remarks, confirming that second unit work has happened in Abu Dhabi, though principal photography has not yet started. (Note that we still don’t know if The National pics are actually a Star Wars set.)

Horn reiterated that the film’s budget could be as much as $200M, and that George Lucas is acting as a consultant. He also said that the franchise may revert back to May release dates for future films, depending on the scripts, and that he’s flying to London this week to go over the Episode VII script with J.J. Abrams.

An announcement on casting will be coming “very shortly,” though per usual, we’ll believe that when we see it.

I’m all for a return to spring. A date around the holidays makes fan gatherings exponentially more expensive and thus an even bigger pain in the ass – harder to get vacation time, etc. – than they already are.